Broken rear springs

[4 wheel driver]

On return from holiday (car not driven for 3 weeks) noticed piece of spring and rubber cup on drive behind rear wheel. Looked underneath and saw broken spring tilted over and wrapped round driveshaft. Jacked car up leaving wheel on the ground and managed to screw the spring out. Broken top and bottom! Drove slowly to garage! Advised to replace both sides. On collection told and shown both were broken and from corrosion it had obviously snapped a while ago! No sign or sound of breakage previously whilst driving. Owned from new, 59 plate, 45k, never off- roaded.  Never over-loaded, tows caravan carefully and within weight limits. Replaced with Sachs springs.

Going in for 4 door respray plus seals and foils under warranty in a fortnight.

Happy ending of sorts.... Wish I had kept my Ibiza Cupra Sport 2 L GTI which went under Scrappage..To be kind to the Environment...But that's another story,eh.

[Urrell]

Broken rear springs seem to be a thing of the times.
Dunno if it's poorer quality or the state of the roads.
You don't hear so much about broken front springs, probably because they are designed to carry more weight to start with.

[Llanigraham]

I had the rear 2 break on my old Yeti, only found on the second MOT. Local garage were not at all surprised, and have a large builders dumpy sack in the corner of the workshop full of springs. They said they were changing them weekly, across a whole range of cars.

Scientific friend puts it down to the amount of scrap in some steels now.

[longedge]

Of all the cars we've had in the family, none have been as bad for broken springs as Ford Fiestas. IIRC it's 4 cars and they all had to have front springs replaced at some time, mind you two of them were my grandsons who, despite my best effort has never developed any car sympathy .

[Urrell]

21 minutes ago, longedge said:

Of all the cars we've had in the family, none have been as bad for broken springs as Ford Fiestas.

 

I almost forgot about that but it was 27 years ago.
Going round my favourite roundabout off the A12 into Colchester from Ipswich in my XR2 there was an almighty twang, the front nearside spring broke.

[kenfowler3966]

Broke both front springs on my mk1 Superb. Only way I knew was that ground clearance reduced to stop me driving over the crest of my drive.

wifes mark 1 Fabia broke a front spring. She brought home the broken bit which she saw fly off to ask if it is as important!

[Sad555]

Hardly surprising that springs break with the conditions of our roads,there was an item about a motorist having a spring break and cause damage to his Ferrari due to a pothole in the road and the council refused to pay so he took the issue to a small claims court,was awarded £10,000..........the cost to repair the pothole was under £50 so perhaps if we make claims against the councils when our vehicles get damage through neglect of road repairs it might lead to better and safer roads

Edited 25 March, 2017 by Sad555

[Llanigraham]

The Ferrari owner won his case because it was one pothole that caused his problem, and he had photographic evidence of that hole. In the case of broken springs you (generally) cannot prove the same. 

[Guest]

That's an added benefit of having a dashcam!  My front one picked up the noise the OS front spring made when it went perfectly.  Cannot blame my Local Authority on that as it went on one of the newly laid sections of the M74. 

 

However, I do have a current claim in with them from receiving numerous chips on bonnet and OS wing from one of their gritters.  Could not avoid it as the gritter was travelling in the opposite direction, and the spray was primarily aimed at the opposite carriageway.  The spray was that bad it was landing on the roof. All caught on camera, with the added bonus of GPS and speed.

 

 

[Sad555]

The Ferrari owner won his case because it was one pothole that caused his problem, and he had photographic evidence of that hole. In the case of broken springs you (generally) cannot prove the same. 

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 It only takes one bad pothole to break a spring and when a front one goes you can usually tell and as most people have cameras on phones it's quite easy to take a photo and present it to the council as evidence as they appear to be letting repairs fall behind and quite often the repairs are so shoddy only last a couple of weeks and is a false economy as proved by the Ferrari owner.

Edited 26 March, 2017 by Sad555

[ejstubbs]

On 25/03/2017 at 11:11, Llanigraham said:

Scientific friend puts it down to the amount of scrap in some steels now.

 

I'm afraid that in this instance your scientific friend is mistaken.  Don't you recall this thread, and in particular this post?

 

Quote

 

The overwhelming majority of steel produced in the world is done on modern variations of the openhearth process. This works most effectively by incorporating a percentage of scrap, which is of course much higher quality than iron ore, which even high grade stuff is mostly dirt and is often less than 30% iron. 

You can have whatever quality steel you are prepared to pay for, any problems with materials quality is generally down to an inadequate specification (ie penny pinching) not the methods of modern steel production.

 

 

Steel is probably one of the most widely recycled materials in the world.  I regard that as a good thing; others may disagree.  Depends to a certain extent on how fond you are of opencast iron ore mines, I suppose...

[Llanigraham]

Err?? Why would I remember details of a thread from 4 years ago?

[Gmac983]

Imperfections and impurities in all grades/types of steel is very common particularly in stainless steels and higher carbon grades also in aluminum. Even though all steels are supplied with certification for traceability (when the client requires it) you can still not uncommonly find laminations, porosity and hardened areas within the steel. 

The hardened areas tend to be as a result of poor quality recycled materials incorporated within the batch of steel, even still the material will meet its grade criteria.

Because of this some of our clients will only allow procurement of materials from certain sources to avoid the above mentioned issues as some steel manufactures are much better than others even though their products meet minimum certifiable standards. 

 

Edited 26 October, 2019 by Gmac983